WASHINGTON — Another day in the nation’s capital, another chance for President Bush to look over some advanced vehicles.
Bush reviewed a group of advanced technology commercial vehicles at an event at a U.S. Postal facility here — one day after meeting with the CEOs of General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler Group at the White House.
Bush talked about the need for additional government funding of research with the CEOs and alluded to that today, suggesting the White House may be more open to upping research funding for automakers, especially on advanced batteries.
Even Bush seemed talked-out on the subject — he spoke for less than three minutes today.
“The goal I laid out of reducing gasoline by 20 percent over 10 years is a realistic goal,” Bush said. “In other words, this isn’t a pipe dream, this is something that our nation can accomplish. It’s going to take more research dollars, it’s going to take working with the private sector, and it’s going to take innovative leadership.”
[Editor’s note: The Scuderi air-hybrid engine is designed to operate on a variety of fuels, including gasoline, deisel, and biodeisel].
House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi filed a mammoth clean energy bill yesterday that would provide loans and grants to municipalities to pursue renewable energy and provide a $2,000 credit for purchasers of hybrid vehicles.
The 364-page Green Communities Act would also expedite permitting for the siting of clean energy facilities, provide a $300 credit for businesses to offset the purchase of solar water heaters, and require state government to take steps to cut down on electricity use and set guidelines for energy-conscious state construction projects.
DiMasi, touting his bill as the first of its kind in the country, said that only a $1.4 million appropriation would be necessary to finance the tax credit portions of the bill and that overall the bill “is going to save an awful lot of money.”
Read more of the State House News Service story on Boston.com.
Greater Boston has been ranked fifth on a list of the cities that will be most likely to be host to a “cleantech economic revolution,” according to SustainLane Government, a sustainability knowledge base for state and local government.
The term cleantech refers to venture capital-funded technology startups in everything from biofuels to solar energy. San Francisco-based SustainLane focused on cities with the most promising cleantech incubation clusters, which are seen as a driving force of economic growth.
[The Scuderi Engine is designed to run on a variety of fuels, including biofuels.]
By the Associated Press, 3/15/2007
WASHINGTON - U.S. automakers and a top union official have pledged to work with Congress to find new ways of dealing with global warming, but declared that their industry could not bear the burden alone.
The leaders of General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler, along with the head of the United Auto Workers union, made a rare joint appearance before a House subcommittee Wednesday. They stressed that proposed increases in gas mileage standards for new vehicles would be extremely expensive and could have calamitous results.
“This could include the closing of additional facilities and the loss of tens of thousand of automotive jobs,” Ron Gettelfinger, president of the union, said.
But all of the industry leaders, under questioning from the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, vowed to work with the committee to produce regulations to address climate change and consider “new regulatory regimes” beyond the fuel economy program.
EU leaders agreed Friday on a bold set of measures to fight global warming, pledging that a fifth of the bloc’s energy will come from green power sources such as wind turbines and solar panels by 2020 and 10 percent of European cars will run on biofuels.
At French insistence, the deal - which does not yet include an enforcement mechanism - noted the role atomic energy could play in replacing coal- or oil-fired power plants blamed for pumping out greenhouse gases. The inclusion caused unease for non-nuclear states such as Austria and Ireland and triggered complaints from environmental groups.
European leaders said the agreement, the first to go beyond the 35-nation Kyoto Protocol in its targets for greenhouse gas emissions cuts, marked a turning point in the fight against global warming.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel challenged other nations to follow suit, saying the world still had time to “avoid what could well be a human calamity” caused by climate change.
